AI Automation
- 8 min read
What are the types of AI (narrow vs general)?
You’ve heard the AI buzz. But what kind of 'intelligence' are we really dealing with? Here’s the difference between Narrow and General AI—and what that means for your business.
Have you ever noticed that every time someone says “AI,” half the room hears “robots taking over,” and the other half thinks of some Gmail tool that suggests replies like “Sounds good 👍.”
Here’s the truth: Most of the AI hype out there is either way overblown (General AI) or way underutilized (Narrow AI). And if you’re a founder, a marketer, or a lean ops team trying to do 12 things before breakfast, you need to know which is which—because one of them is already in your business, whether you meant to invite it in or not.
This post is your no-nonsense guide to the different types of AI—Narrow AI vs General AI—and what actually matters if you’re trying to save time, improve processes, or just finally figure out why your CRM feels like a dumpster fire.
Because we’re all drowning in repeatable tasks, janky workflows, and tools that talk past each other. And the fastest-growing companies aren’t adding more humans to fix that—they’re adding smart automations powered by the kind of AI that actually works today.
Quick spoiler: That’s Narrow AI. (General AI is still off building a spaceship in a philosophy lab somewhere.)
This is the workhorse. The specialist. The nerdy little genius that automates one task really, really well and then goes back in its digital hole.
Some examples you’ve almost definitely encountered:
All of these are narrow. They do a specific thing: filter spam, tag leads, recommend shows. And they do it way faster, more consistently, and less emotionally than your team ever could.
Why this matters: Narrow AI powers the tools that help real-world businesses increase efficiency, personalize customer experience, and automate low-value grunt work.
Yes—in the same way a calculator is smarter than you at doing long division after a beer.
Narrow AI is impressive, but it can’t reason or “think” beyond what it was trained on. You give it tons of structured data, it learns patterns, and it gets really good at specific tasks. But ask it to apply that skill to another context and… zip. Nothing. Lights on, no one home.
If you’ve got a sales team drowning in inbound leads but still missing half their follow-ups, guess what? Narrow AI can fix that.
If your content marketing team is tired of writing, editing, and cutting 10 clips from every webinar—yep, that’s a small job for Narrow AI-powered automation.
Here’s what well-deployed Narrow AI can actually do for you:
The trick: You need to feed it the right prompts, plug it into the right systems, and be clear about what problem it’s solving. That’s where most people drop the ball.
Alright, now let’s talk about General AI. This is the stuff of TED Talks and sci-fi screenplays. AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) refers to an AI system that can do everything we can do—reason, adapt, plan, even feel (supposedly).
Fun to think about. Not something your business can use right now.
With AGI, the goal is for an AI system to examine a business problem, digest the context, ask clarifying questions, and then offer ten strategic options—with risks and timelines. We’re not there… yet.
Until then? Stick with narrow. It’s humble, useful, gets the job done, and doesn’t ask for a raise.
| Feature | Narrow AI | General AI |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | One job, really well | Anything a human can do |
| Learning | Within defined parameters; needs training | Self-learning and adaptable |
| Context | Low; needs structured input and guidance | High; understands situations + nuance |
| Status | In-market and deployable today | Theoretical (still in research labs) |
| Examples | Spam filters, chatbots, GPT prompts | Nothing yet—still fiction |
| Business value | Boosts productivity + efficiency fast | Could spark total industry shifts—someday |
If you're a small team, Narrow AI is your new best friend. You don’t need to wait for some all-knowing machine god to walk into your office.
You just need to clean up what’s already messy and stop wasting hours on manual stuff that can and should be automated.
You’ve probably seen “plug-and-play options” that promise the world but deliver half-baked automations that aren’t tailored to how you work.
That’s fine as a starting point. But if you want real time savings—and your team to actually trust the system—you need semi-custom solutions that are designed around your workflows, not someone else’s template.
That’s exactly what we help people build at Timebender.
Narrow AI isn’t fake, scary, or far-off. It’s here. It works. But only if you use it right.
Forget the robot overlords. Let’s start by fixing the 300 unread CRM tasks or the fact that your sales team is still manually updating a spreadsheet.
Book a Workflow Optimization Session and let’s map what would actually save you time.
No pressure. Just clarity, smart automation design, and maybe a cheeky comment or two about your current setup.
River Braun founder of Timebender, is an AI consultant and systems strategist with 10+ years of experience helping service businesses streamline operations and embrace automation.
Schedule a Timebender Workflow Audit today and get a custom roadmap to run leaner, grow faster, and finally get your weekends back.
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